H. Wanting was a Dutch journalist, editor of the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, who wrote the voorrede (foreword) to the 1934 SIMAVI pamphlet Een strijd in Atjeh (1934), dated September 1934. His foreword sets out the circumstances in which C. Graadt van Roggen came to write the three letters on the Atjeh work of the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen, and states the purpose for which they were republished.
The foreword
Wanting opened with the reflection that the manner in which human lives cross one another’s course on this earth may with justice be called wholly capricious and incalculable, yet that meetings sometimes take place which, however brief, give occasion to so fruitful a contact and with such far-reaching consequences that one calls them, according to the standpoint of the observer, either a happy accident or a wise dispensation.
Such a meeting, he wrote, occurred when in February of the previous year the Baloeran of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd brought together on her homeward voyage two passengers who had never seen one another and who after a short association would never see one another again, and who were yet so dependent upon one another that even this fleeting acquaintance would bear uncommonly rich fruit.
Purpose of publication
Wanting was explicit about the aim. It was not, he said, to beat the great drum for Tijssen’s work — anyone who knew this physician and his modesty would not even feel such a thought arise in himself. Nor was it to collect money for his quiet but great work. It was rather “door deze mededeelingen van dr. Tijssen de plicht onzer Menschelijkheid naar voren te brengen, tot welks betrachting Simavi roept” — to bring forward, through these communications of Dr. Tijssen, the duty of our humanity, to the observance of which Simavi calls — and thereby at the same time to fulfil an act of piëteit towards the young ardent idealist that Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen had been.
He closed by placing the responsibility on the living: “En dit ligt immers in de hand der levenden, die een plicht der menschelijkheid tegenover het lijdende Indië hebben te vervullen en wier ook nog zoo geringe steunverleening aan het breede doel van Simavi tevens zal zijn een posthume hulde aan hem, die met zoo warm hart de hier volgende brieven schreef.” — And this surely lies in the hand of the living, who have a duty of humanity towards the suffering Indies to fulfil, and whose support of the broad aim of Simavi, however small, will at the same time be a posthumous tribute to him.
The foreword is signed H. WANTING. September, 1934.
See Also
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- C. Graadt van Roggen
- J. Tijssen
- Vereeniging SIMAVI
- Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant
- Baloeran
- 1934
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 1–2.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.